A bigger Voice for Small Business

Bush Ignores Small Businesses With Last State of The Union Address

by | Jan 30, 2008 | Press Release

Press Release

Bush Ignores Small Businesses With Last State of The Union Address

January 30, 2008

Petaluma, Calif. –  With the pressure of the economic downturn on his shoulders, President George W. Bush delivered his final State of the Union Address Monday, and to the dismay of small business advocates failed to adequately address the concerns of the more than 26 million small businesses across the country.
 
During his two-term presidency, President Bush has established an anti-small business track record by cutting the Small Business Administration’s staffing and budget by more than half and by adopting policies that allowed the diversion of federal small business contracts to Fortune 1000 corporations and other large companies.
 
The American Small Business League (ASBL) points to the SBA’s June 2007 5-year re-certification rule as an example of the Bush Administration’s anti-small business policies. The rule, which went into effect on June 30th, allows the federal government to continue to count small business contract awards to Fortune 1000 corporations towards the 23 percent small business procurement goal through 2012.
 
“Over the past seven years he [President Bush] has ignored more than a dozen federal investigations that have all found fraud, abuse, loopholes and a lack of oversight to be contributing factors to the diversion of federal small business contracts to large and international corporations,” President and Founder of the ASBL, Lloyd Chapman said. “We estimate that every year nearly $100 billion in federal small business contract awards are awarded to Fortune 1000 corporations.”
 
The ASBL estimates that Bush administration policies have allowed more than $100 billion a year to be diverted from legitimate small businesses to the top 2 percent of firms in the United States and Europe. (https://www.asbl.com/documents/Fedmine.pdf)
 
“With the economy slumping, President Bush should be focusing on helping the backbone of America, its small businesses,” Chapman said. “By stopping the diversion of federal small business contracts to large and international corporations, we would be putting nearly $100 billion back into the hands of middle class firms where most Americans work.”
 
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SBA Proposes Policy to Limit Contracting Opportunities for Women-Owned Firms

by | Jan 7, 2008 | Press Release

Press Release

SBA Proposes Policy to Limit Contracting Opportunities for Women-Owned Firms

January 7, 2008

Petaluma, Calif. -  Today the American Small Business League launched a national campaign to oppose a newly proposed Small Business Administration (SBA) policy that will further delay the implementation of the 5 percent set-aside for woman-owned firms that became law with the passage of P.L. 106-554 in 2000.

If implemented, the new policy will severely limit federal contracting opportunities for women-owned firms.
  
The proposed policy represents the latest attempt in the Bush Administration's seven-year campaign to kill the program designed to ensure women-owned businesses have a fair and equitable opportunity to receive a minimum of 5 percent of federal small business contracts.

Additionally, the policy ignores the findings of a Rand Corporation study that found that woman-owned firms were underrepresented in up to 121 of the 140 industrial categories of goods and services purchased by the federal government.

The SBA's proposed policy would limit the implementation of the program by only allowing set-aside contracts for women in 4 of the 140 industrial categories.

"I hope people understand that what this means is the Bush Administration doesn't believe that giving male owned firms over 95 percent of all federal contracts and subcontracts is enough," President of the ASBL Lloyd Chapman said. "This administration is opposed to an existing federal law that would merely provide that the 50 percent of U.S. citizens that are women receive at least 5 percent of the federal contracts. I think women across the country need to let the SBA know that they will not stand for these injustices by submitting comments in opposition to this rule."

In 1994, Congress set a goal of awarding 5 percent of the total value of all prime contracts to women-owned businesses. According to data from the Federal Procurement Data System, that goal has not been met since 1996. In FY 2006, women-owned firms received only 3.4 percent of federal small business contracting dollars. While male owned firms received a staggering 96.6 percent of all federal contracts.

The American Small Business League's campaign to oppose this anti-woman-owned small business policy will involve: mobilizing ASBL members to comment against the proposed rule, working with chambers of commerce across the country to help them encourage their members to comment and contact their legislators, and communicating the importance of stopping this rule change to legislators in the House of Representatives and the Senate.  


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